J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana across the Grand Canal, Venice, from a Balcony of the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustunian); the Spire of San Giorgio Maggiore 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana across the Grand Canal, Venice, from a Balcony of the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustunian); the Spire of San Giorgio Maggiore’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Verso:
Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana across the Grand Canal, Venice, from a Balcony of the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustunian); the Spire of San Giorgio Maggiore 1840
D31830
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 20a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Balcony of the Europa’ top right, and ‘Red’ left of centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the page turned horizontally, the central view is south across the entrance of Grand Canal to the porch of the Dogana overlooking the Bacino, with the plain Seminario Patriarcale towards the right below the domes of the church of Santa Maria della Salute. The main dome of the latter is repeated at the top left, where the main body of the church is shown to the south-west, with the apsidal east end of the former church of San Gregorio to its right, and the dome of the Gesuati (Santa Maria del Rosario), now obscured by the late nineteenth-century Palazzo Genovese, further on.
The loose vertical forms terminating the view towards the right of the upper view appear to be part of the façade of the Hotel Europa (the Palazzo Giustinian), where Turner was staying, confirmed by his note: ‘Balcony of the Europa’. Compare Tate D32296 (Turner Bequest CCCXX 17a) in the contemporary Rotterdam to Venice sketchbook, a view from a similar angle isolated from the main run of Venice subjects later in that book, and perhaps the first drawing (or one of the earliest) made on arrival in the city.
The present view is effectively continued south-eastwards to the left on folio 19 verso (D31828), where San Giorgio Maggiore and the Zitelle are shown across the Bacino. The two pages likely informed Turner’s painting of The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella, from the Steps of the Europa, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1842 (Tate N00372),1 although he was long familiar with the scene; see for example the detailed pencil sketches of the Dogana and Salute in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14389, D14417; Turner Bequest CLXXV 40, 54).2
At the bottom left is the spire of the campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore, continued from the view of the church on folio 21 verso (D31832); presumably, turning back from there and finding the upper and middle registers here already filled, Turner would have temporarily rolled back the fore-edge of that page to the gutter here to complete the upper part of the other sketch.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.245–6 no.396, pl.400 (colour).
2
See also Warrell 2003, pp.83, 171, 263 note 1, 264 note 26.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana across the Grand Canal, Venice, from a Balcony of the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustunian); the Spire of San Giorgio Maggiore 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-santa-maria-della-salute-and-the-dogana-across-the-grand-r1196724, accessed 19 September 2024.